Green-light for new town-centre block

Developer Telereal Trillium has won outline planning consent to demolish a former government building in Bromley town centre and replace it with an 11-storey mixed-use scheme.

Its plans for the long-vacant Department of Health and Social Security building in Westmoreland Road will see 71 apartments and 1,517 sq metres of new office space constructed at the 0.32 hectare site.

The office space will be accommodated in the building’s podium section, wrapping around the structure’s lowest three floors.

Earlier this year members of Bromley Council’s development control committee rejected a previous Telereal Trillium scheme for the site that proposed a 110-bed hotel, 49 homes, and 592 sq metres of retail space, housed in a structure ranging in height from four to 11 storeys.

Recommending the latest scheme for approval, planning officers said that while the overall height was the same as the previous scheme, the podium element had been reduced in scale to a level that was considered acceptable to preserve long-distance views of Keston Ridge from the High Street.

“It is considered that a building of the illustrative parameters shown on the submitted plans can be accommodated on the site without having an unacceptably harmful effect on the amenities of the occupants of nearby residential properties and the locally-listed St Mark’s Church and the listed former St Mark’s School,” they said.

Officers added that although the site was earmarked for the provision of hotel accommodation in the Bromley Town Centre Area Action Plan, the town was not considered to have a shortage of hotel rooms in the development pipeline and new “grade A” office space was a welcome alternative.

Councillors were told that negotiations with Telereal Trillium had resulted in a proposed Section 106 Agreement planning-gain settlement of £350,000 and six affordable housing units, which was considered acceptable.